Recreational vehicles, such as travel trailers, motorcoaches, fifth-wheels, and the like, are generally large vehicles configured to house multiple passengers during long trips and extended stays. As such, recreational vehicles often have multiple rooms to provide living and sleeping spaces for the passengers. For example, it is common for recreational vehicles to include a driving compartment situated near a front of the vehicle, a living-room compartment situated near a central portion of the vehicle, a bathroom situated near the central or a rear portion of the vehicle, and one or more bedrooms situated near the central or the rear portion of the vehicle.
Although recreational vehicles are generally large in size, as described above, they are often only manufactured with a single door (i.e., a primary door) for ingress and egress. Generally, the primary door is positioned near the front of the vehicle, so as to provide efficient access to the driving cab or to the living-room compartment of the vehicle. To access the primary door from the bathrooms or from the bedrooms, passengers must traverse nearly the length of the recreational vehicle. As such, in the case of an emergency, such as a fire in the recreational vehicle or a medical emergency, passengers located in the bathroom or the bedrooms must traverse a significant distance to reach the primary door to exit the recreational vehicle. In some emergency situations, it may not be possible to safely traverse such a distance. For instance, a fire might be impeding the path to the primary door and/or dense smoke may make it difficult or impossible to traverse the path to the primary door.
Some recreational vehicles include emergency exit windows that may be used for emergency egress. However, such emergency exit windows are generally small in size, which make them difficult for passengers to easily egress through. Further, such emergency exit windows are generally positioned at a significant height above the exterior ground surface. As such, exiting through the emergency exit windows can be a difficult action to perform in a safe manner.
Furthermore, because of the size constraints of recreational vehicles, it is difficult to find sufficient available space within a recreational vehicle to devote solely to an emergency exit for the vehicle.
Given the above, there is a need for an emergency exit that provides for emergency egress from a recreational vehicle, with such an emergency exit being spaced apart from the recreational vehicle's primary door so as to facilitate emergency egress from portions of the recreational vehicle that are spaced apart from the primary door. Additionally, there is a need for an emergency exit that provides passengers a simple and safe egress route from within the recreational vehicle. Furthermore, there is a need for an emergency exit that can be efficiently integrated with the living space of the recreational vehicle, taking into consideration the recreational vehicle's inherent size constraints.